Letter to the Editor: Property rights need to be respected in terms of new energy generation, distribution

Much has been in local news about electric power generation and distribution centering around solar power, as well as the “Grain Belt Express” power distribution plans that affect Pike County in Illinois and Ralls County in Missouri.

Going back in history, Thomas Edison was a pioneer in technology development and one of the first to develop the new technology of electrification. However, he was human, and his quest to provide the distribution of electrical power was flawed in the fact that what he proposed as Direct Current (DC) power could not be up- or down-converted in voltage.  So, the size of the wire to transmit electric power would have been massive like the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.

A guy by the name of George Westinghouse, however, had the idea of using Alternating Current (AC) on what would become the preferred form to transmit electric energy over long distances and be used by all consumers.  The use of electrical transformers could up-convert and down-convert the electrical energy from more than 100kV down to 120V in those early days, as it still does today. 

Fast forward nearly 130 years later and the development of high-power regulators to convert AC power to DC and inverters to convert DC power to AC, along with storage batteries such as lithium iron phosphate, has been developed.

It is good to look at new developments that now allow more efficient long-distance transmission of electrical energy by DC current, replacing a four-wire WYE configuration AC lines with only a two-wire DC current run.  This is what is planned with “The Grain Belt Express” plan that has strong opposition from people like Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. 

His concern about the issue of eminent domain is valid, but his assumption that the project is of a “radical ‘green agenda” is not.  As an attorney, it would be good if he stuck to using his skills to mitigate property conflicts in adapting such new technologies, while realizing he may not be an expert on such technologies himself.

This project will allow four separate electric grid systems in North America to be connected efficiently to better distribute and manage the load requirements of wind turbines and solar, as well as other energy sources of the United States and Canada. Situations such as the power grid failure in Texas in February 2021, an isolated grid from the rest of the U.S. that saw the system drop to as low as 59.4 AC cycles per second and colipase, need to be avoided in the future with sound engineering and energy development programs like the HVDC power Grain Belt Express.

Newly developed technology with wind turbines now allows the replacement of mechanical gear drive mechanisms in their hubs that were needed to reach 60-cycle AC to be replaced with AC-to-DC solid state regulators and inverters, either in the hubs or at the location, to allow an entire wind turbine farm to be more efficient.  They are similar in manner but in reverse to your outside central air conditioner, which takes 60-cycle AC power and converts it in a regulator to DC, then through an inverter to run back to an AC motor — not at 60 cycles but as low as 20 cycles to run as energy efficient while meeting the heat dissipation requirements and as quiet as possible.

Latest technologies have developed to provide effective high-speed circuit breaker disconnects of the high-voltage DC lines. Unlike AC power, which goes to 0 volts 60 times per second, the DC current level is constant. To the nearest thousand miles, electricity travels at 186,000 miles per second. If you see wind turbines not rotating at a given location, you can pretty much assume the wind is blowing through others in other locations most times in our country.  

Yes, solar panels only convert energy during the day, and we need sources like natural gas-driven turbine power plants to generate electricity in the years to come. However, taking action like making our long line power grid transmit DC power can mitigate the interoperability problems of 60-cycle AC power grids with wind turbines and solar sources we face today.

Everyone’s property rights need to be respected in terms of new energy generation and distribution. Wind turbines, solar panels and high-power transmission towers will always have a certain amount of industrial look to them. We need to make sure we are good stewards of the land and nature.

What we can’t allow to happen is what occurred on the 120-acre farm that once was my grandfather’s. White silica sand was mined out of the ground and transported by truck to feed the fracking process being done in places like Pennsylvania to mine natural gas.  The red arrow shows the area of my family farm in Illinois that was now mined-out farmland. The green area was saved only due to the fact of a 19^th-century family cemetery being present.

Replay the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to hear Trump state how wrong Harris was initially on the environmental effects of fracking, only to change her mind to be in favor. He even mentions it in his closing remarks. She did change her mind, but it must be noted that the technology also changed in about 2018 to allow brown sand, like you find in west Texas, to be used in place of the round ball barring type white silica sand in applications less than 800 feet deep. So much for the old Carpenter family farm mined out before August 2019 before mining in LaSalle County (Ill.) farmland essentially stopped.

Example  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sgbBT5Ebdk> US Silica’s Covel Creek Frac Sand Mine, LaSalle County, Ill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KAhlsPX2M4&ab_channel=FracTrackerVideos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehb9H3ZQXjE&ab_channel=FracTrackerVideos

Not much is being said about the new energy generation facility on Koch’s Lane just west of Ambiance. It looks like all the solar panels are in, as well as other equipment (maybe inverters). The lithium iron phosphate batteries likely need to come from China, so it will be interesting when the facility can take delivery.  China is fourth in countries with the most lithium reserves behind Chile, Australia and Argentina.

We should be mindful of how Lithium is mined in places like China.  This solar farm will be different in terms of most other solar farms, as it stores much of its energy in very large banks of these batteries and goes online only when high power usage requires help to reduce “brownouts” or voltage reduction, which causes more inefficient energy consumption.

I hope you find some of what I have written to be helpful. Try to balance your judgments to include considerations of making the best use of new technologies being developed by some of the smartest people in this world.

I think I understand what new electrical generation hardware placed in given areas means to people. A while back, I was not in favor of an ethanol plant being across the road from my front yard but may have considered at the time being bought out at 50% above market value of my home and the homes of my neighbors so people working at the plant could live in that housing close to work.  

Now comes new efforts to build many new nuclear power plants in the U.S.   They take great amounts of water to cool them, so planting them next to the Mississippi River and our community could very well happen.  I have concerns about that, too.

Don Carpenter
Quincy Illinois